Maya lifted her head, startled by his sudden appearance, then let loose a silvery laugh that sent cold fingers down his spine. “I don’t think so, Sheriff,” she said, reforming the ball of light that had mesmerized the boy. “I think I’ll take this one too, and leave you lying here in the rain, looking even more incompetent than ever.”
She closed the distance between them, holding the whirring light up in front of his face. For a moment, he felt the world as a distant echo, far away and as illusory as a fireside tale, then a burning sensation from the medallion hanging over his chest snapped the spell like a spinner’s broken thread, unraveling it back to its source.
Maya faltered for a precious second, stunned by the unexpected failure of her magic, and Liam pulled out the Taser he’d been holding behind his back and shot her with 50,000 volts. She fell to the ground with a satisfying thud and lay there spasming uncontrollably.
By the time Davy’s mother had flown out of the house with a shriek, Maya’s hands were firmly handcuffed behind her, the cold steel holding her in place in more ways than the obvious. Davy sat up, looking dazed and confused, and Trevor the dog barked loudly as if taking credit for his enemy’s capture.
Mrs. Turner clasped the boy to her so tightly she threatened to cut off his oxygen, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Oh my god, oh my god,” she kept saying. “My baby, oh my god.”
Liam patted her on the shoulder, and then heaved a glowering Maya to her feet. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Turner. It’s all over now.”
But of course, it wasn’t.
TWENTY-THREE
LIAM PULLED HIS cruiser into the sheriff’s department parking lot and cursed fluently under his breath. Someone had clearly been listening to a police scanner, because it looked like half the town was already there.
He got out of the car and fetched Maya from the backseat, her hands still cuffed. Her lovely blond hair was disheveled, and there was a brown smear of mud on her once pristine white blouse. She looked like she’d been ridden hard and put up wet. Somehow, despite this, she managed to appear cool and professional. Liam, in contrast, felt rumpled and disreputable after an afternoon spent lurking in a tree. It hardly seemed fair.
On the other hand, he wasn’t the one wearing the cuffs. There was a certain satisfaction in that.
Mrs. Turner and her husband (who’d returned home from work just in time to be greeted by a hysterical wife, a crying son, a sullen Maya, and Liam) followed the sheriff and his prisoner in through the front door and into a cacophony of chaos. Mrs. Turner hadn’t let go of Davy since she’d reclaimed him in the backyard, and he seemed happy to cling to her hand as they walked into the midst of dozens of competing voices raised in demand of answers that no one there had.
Molly was frantically trying to contain a crowd made up of most of the board members (including Clive Matthews, of course, who had apparently been dragged away from the dinner table by the news, if the napkin tucked into his top pocket was any indication), the families whose children had been taken, and every deputy who wasn’t officially out on patrol. Liam’s eyes scanned the room for Baba, since he’d made sure to send her a message via the medallion—which apparently had more uses than he’d been told. But there was no sign of a tall fierce-looking woman with a cloud of black hair and piercing amber eyes.
His secretary, on the other hand, greeted him with a cry of gladness. “Sheriff! Thank goodness you’re back.” Her gaze darted to the handcuffed Maya briefly, but by force of will dragged her attention back to the issue at hand. “Everyone heard that you caught someone trying to kidnap another child. Is it true?” Her normally sweet face hardened into granite as she looked at his prisoner. “Is that her? Did she take all those poor children?”
Liam nodded. “So it would appear.” He motioned to the Turners. “Can you get the Turners seated in my office please, and get them some coffee or tea, or whatever they need? I’m going to process Ms. Freeman, and then I need to get an official report from them.”
Before Molly could even take a step, Clive Matthews and Peter Callahan shoved their way out of the crowd, like a mismatched suit-wearing Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.
“What is the meaning of this?” Callahan bellowed. “Take those cuffs off my assistant immediately!”
“I’m sorry, I can’t do that,” Liam said mildly, but with a certain justifiable satisfaction. “I caught Ms. Freeman in the commission of a crime, trying to take Davy Turner right out of his own backyard. She’s going into a cell and that’s where she’s staying. If you want to be helpful, you might try to convince her to tell us what she’s done with the other three children she’s stolen.”
The parents in the throng swarmed forward en masse and started yelling at Maya, Liam, and the Turners, more or less indiscriminately: “Where is my child?” “What did you do with my son?” A few threats floated out of the sea of faces like angry hornets.